


Tried To Love You My Way

by ruric



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Community: slashthedrabble, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-01-01
Updated: 2005-01-01
Packaged: 2017-11-07 20:03:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/434841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ruric/pseuds/ruric
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lindsey doesn't believe in love at first sight.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tried To Love You My Way

The stories his momma told the pack of kids as they sat wrapped in blankets, huddled together for warmth on cold winter evenings, had always been about heroic knights, beautiful princesses and happy ever afters. His momma had been an old fashioned teller of tales – she could weave a story that would lift you out of your body and take you to another world. A world where you could breathe scents which were foreign, taste the difference in the air, see in glorious and vibrant technicolor.

To this day he only has to hear a fragment of a fairy tale and it feels like he's been sucker punched. He's back in that kitchen listening to the soft melody of her voice, feeling the press of kin huddled around him and the threadbare scratchiness of a worn blanket against his cheek.

But he'd always known tales of love at first sight and happy endings weren't for people like them. 

He'd known it when he'd watched his momma weep over the graves of his sisters, known it when his daddy signed away the house, known it soul deep when, a year later, his daddy had gone into the woods and eaten his gun.

But he'd been wrong.

The first time he'd seen her he'd fallen in love; fallen for the broken and fragile thing she was and with the woman she could so easily have been if only the situation had been different. He'd fallen harder as he watched her rediscover the world, tentatively testing sense after sense, and searching for memories. He couldn't fail to see the sadness in every move she made – the aching despair every time he looked into her eyes – and he'd tried to take that away the only way he knew how. But what he had to offer, she didn't want. 

Angel was the centre of her world, always had been and always would be. He still hasn't figured out whether he'd been more jealous of the fact that she’d loved Angel, or that the vampire appeared to return that love. She'd played Lindsey for months and he didn't care because he'd loved her with everything he had. It hadn't been nearly enough.

He'd spent his life fixing other people's problems but he couldn't fix her and he'd made probably the biggest mistake of his life when he'd tried. He knew he'd lost her when he watched Drusilla turn her – but he'd never stopped loving her – not when he watched her die, not when she turned up later in his office, sleek and well fed with Drusilla in tow. He'd even loved her that night in Holland’s basement, with the rank scent of fear and death all around him, when her face transfigured and the demon looked hungrily out of her eyes.

Stories with love at first sight and happy endings weren't for people like him.

What linked him to Angel could never be described as love, and could never, in any universe, have a happy ending.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the "sight" prompt on the LJ community [slashthedrabble](http://slashthedrabble.livejournal.com/).


End file.
